Taiwan yesterday said that it was willing to offer cancer-stricken Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) treatment after prison officials granted him medical parole.
The offer came a day after China rejected criticism over its treatment of Liu, as the US urged Beijing to give the paroled dissident freedom to move and choose his own doctors.
One of Liu’s lawyers, Mo Shaoping (莫少平), said on Monday that the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been hospitalized after being diagnosed last month with late-stage liver cancer.
The writer, now 61, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for “subversion” after spearheading a petition calling for greater human rights democratic reforms, Charter 08, which was signed by more than 300 Chinese intellectuals and activists.
Mo said that people on medical parole usually cannot leave the country, but if Liu was treated as a “special case” it would be possible for him to seek treatment abroad, according to Chinese law.
Taiwan said it would “welcome” Liu for treatment.
“We urge Beijing to immediately release Liu and let him choose wherever he wants to receive treatment,” Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said.
“We welcome Liu if he chooses Taiwan and we will provide him with the best medical care possible. Taiwan has very good expertise treating liver diseases,” Chiu said.
Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹), a Tiananmen protest leader who lives in exile in Taiwan, said that he had contacted the German Federal Foreign Office in the hope the country would take Liu for treatment, as it has a hospital famous for treating liver cancer.
New US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad yesterday told reporters outside the official US ambassador’s residence in Beijing that he would like to see Liu treated abroad.
“We Americans would like to see him have the opportunity for treatment elsewhere if that could be of help,” Branstad said.
Human rights groups have also called on Chinese authorities to give Liu the chance to seek treatment elsewhere.
Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon (潘嘉偉) told Reuters late on Tuesday that he had been authorized by several people close to the family to say that Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia (劉霞), had told Chinese authorities she wants her husband to receive medical treatment abroad.
Additional reporting by Reuters and staff writer
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